Been watching ninja movies lately. The three best so far are:
- Super Ninja: Extremely violent ninja exploitation movie about how it’s a white people’s world (takes place in America), and that’s why the Five Element Ninjas are dealing drugs and framing innocent Chinese kung fu cops. Feral and deranged racial politics, where white people are only bad (true) and the Chinese actor is friends with a black guy (nice) but the dub for the partner is a racist white-guy-doing-black-guy accent (yikes) and there’s a brief “how could you betray me for the white man’s favor!” subplot (mega-oof) that exists just to make the partners fight once. Also every woman exists to be sexually menaced. The big bad says “Yes, I’m a murderer, and a would-be rapist too!” Pure sleaze, but I like sleaze in film even as I hate it in real life. I’m a walking contradiction I suppose. Some great fights in this and insane torture scenes where the white cops wrap metal chains around the hero’s neck and whack his shins with clubs.
- Secret Ninja, Roaring Tiger: Godfrey Ho and Dragon Lee are such a power collaboration; everything I’ve seen with both of them is pretty good! Dragon Lee wins a martial arts tournament for the hand of a local rich guy’s daughter, but a ninja society kidnaps her and reveals a deeper intrigue involving mistaken birth and murdered masters. In the end, the two competition guys team up to defeat the head ninja. Fun and light kung fu with multiple comedy moments, minimal sleaze, and a cool lady ninja. Junk food.
- Ninja in the Deadly Trap: Japanese marauders are laying waste to coastal Chinese towns, and employing ninjas to assassinate anyone who tries to stop them, particularly this one Chinese general. His son enlists the help of 3 kung fu masters to protect his father against ninja treachery. There’s precisely one mostly-ignored woman in this movie (noticing a misogyny pattern?) but at least she isn’t sexually menaced. The kung fu guys are charmers, and the second half of the film is basically Survival Horror In The World Of Ninja, where we see careful setup and payoff of the ninja plots to kill the general. Better than I expected, especially since it’s the goriest of the three listed here; faces get melted off, hands dismembered, people decapitated and disemboweled.
I watched like 4 other ninja movies but they are all unremarkable Godfrey Ho cut-n-paste shitfests. I really want to see a supercut of all Richard Harrison ninja scenes in those movies, like as its own movie.